Management Improvement Carnival #128

The management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. I also collect management improvement articles through Curious Cat Management Articles, you can subscribe via RSS to new article additions.

• Resist your machine thinking! [the broken link was removed] by Jeff Liker – “To maintain consistent output, one must continually adjust the system to changing environmental conditions. This is called dynamic homeostasis in systems thinking, or running to stay in place. … Maintenance comes from having clearly defined standards, observing carefully for deviations from those standards, and then developing and implementing countermeasures to eliminate the deviations.”
• 5 lessons from an Information Architecture career by Martin Belam – “Over the years I’ve learned that pragmatic UX that gets software shipped is more valuable than perfecting your pre-build documentation.
  This lesson is very much tied up with the ideas of progressive iterations, and improving things from the base of a ‘minimum viable product’… There is nothing less compelling than shipping nothing at all.”
• Pop quiz: Lean-ify this iPad case by Kathleen Fasanella – “Here is a summary of the specific items you mentioned: Having the work piece, waste can, tools and equipment arranged optimally. Component placement was (mostly) eyeballed, several suggested jigs or templates for layout. David suggested notching for more efficient placement. The fabric covers should have been cut with rounded covers to eliminate the messy and wasteful step of hand trimming.”
• Demystifying the Product Owner by – the product owner leads product discovery: “to help identify and describe requirements, and to ensure that the product backlog is ready for the next sprint planning meeting. It also means that the product owner has to engage in product planning, visioning and product road mapping…”
• [the broken link to the embedded video was removed] Gary Hamel at Dell: How can IT organizations adapt?
• Working in the cracks in the system [the broken link was removed] by Wally Bock – “Use the situation as an opportunity for conversation. Talk to John in private. Tell him you’ve noticed that he’s been coming in late and tell him why that matters to you and to the team. After you say that, wait for John to speak next.”
• Back At Square One by Bill Waddell – “Manufacturers are all for lowering the water level of inventory to expose the rocks of waste and poor quality – the basic principle of lean – unless a supplier can save them a nickel on purchase price, in which case the water level has to stay high and all of the waste goes unattended.”
• Why I Run a Flat Company by Jason Fried – “At 37signals, however, we have a different position on ambition. We’re not big fans of what I consider ‘vertical’ ambition—that is, the usual career-path trajectory… On the other hand, we revere ‘horizontal’ ambition—in which employees who love what they do are encouraged to dig deeper…”
• Who is the customer for your internal quality audits? [the broken link was removed] by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “The people in the process – those who design stuff, make stuff, and move stuff – are their customer. They need to be the voice of the customer that makes the people in the process better able to meet those needs, to deliver value, to satisfy and delight customers.”
• Larry Page’s First Blunder: Spam Grandma For Cash by Steve Deming – “When the goal involves innovation and creativity, then extrinsic drivers tend to be ineffective and even counterproductive. What research shows is that once a basic level of remuneration is in place, it’s more effective to rely on intrinsic motivation and inspire people to achieve the goal…”
• Quality is Made in the Board Room by John Hunter – once the right management system has been established (one that respects people, continual improves using a standardized improvement process, practices evidence based management, focuses on customer value, improves processes rather than blames people, builds the capacity of the organization over time…) then quality is everyone’s responsibility.